Since the early 1990's, the number of people using the World Wide Web has grown at a substantial rate. As more users take advantage of the World Wide Web, they generate higher and higher volumes of traffic over the Internet. As the benefits of commercializing the Internet can be tremendous, businesses increasingly take advantage of this traffic by advertising their products or services on-line. These advertisements may appear in the form of leased advertising space (e.g., “banners”) on websites or advertisements on digital television, which are comparable to rented billboard space in highways and cities or commercials broadcasted during television or radio programs.
Before users browse to a particular web page, there is much unknown to the companies that might advertise on that page and to advertisers that may place advertisements on the companies' behalf Neither the companies nor the advertisers know how many users will browse to particular web pages and may or may not know of the number of competing advertisers that are interested in advertising on the same web page, and therefore do not know the volume of advertisements (the number of “impressions”) they will be able to place. Further, neither know how many users will select or “click” on each advertisement or if “conversions,” e.g., sales or signing up new users, will result from each display or impression of an advertisement or what the ratio of clicks to conversions may be.
Companies may be interested in impressions (e.g., if they are trying to increase awareness of a brand), clicks (e.g., if they are trying to provide more information about a product), or conversions (e.g., if they are trying to make sales or get new users to sign up for services, etc.). Companies may pay, on the other hand, based on impressions, clicks, or conversions, or a combination thereof, regardless of their interests. In addition to wanting to predict impressions, clicks, and conversions, one may want to predict other data related to the advertisement, such as the ratio of impressions to clicks or conversions or the ratio of clicks to conversions. Moreover, one may want to identify the relationship between control signals and advertisement related data.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide such predictions and other advertising-related data.